QUIT SMOKING. LOSE WEIGHT. BE A NICER PERSON. These are the general clichés people talk about in January when they’re thinking about setting New Year Resolutions.
For most of us, it’s a ‘do-over’ month; a time for self-reflection where you dig deep and resolve to overhaul those niggling bad habits you’ve been promising yourself you’d change for months. But for all our good intentions, few of us actually stick to our promises. In fact, University of Scranton research suggests that just 8% of people achieve their New Year’s resolutions.
The inherent problem with resolutions, says success coach Jody Shield (jodyshield.co.uk), is that the magnitude of the task means you’re often primed for failure. This fits with the Super-A philosophy based on the Transtheoretical Model of Behavioural Change: if you don’t know where you are going, how will you know when you get there? (For more on this, read “Rewiring the Body” in Issue 10 of the Super-A Journal).
